The Redonda Island - Antigua

Redonda is a dependency of Antigua and Barbuda. It is one huge rock with a few grassy patches here and there, and is an isolated, precipitous and forbidding island circled by sheer cliffs which fall almost perpendicularly for nearly a thousand feet into the sea beneath the summit on the western side.

It lies between Montserrat and Nevis at distances of 15 and 25 miles, respectively and 35 miles south-west of Antigua. Redonda is a remnant of a volcanic cone and is one of the smallest islands in the chain of the Lesser Antilles. It is one and a half miles long by half a mile wide, and is exactly 971 ft. high. The island of Redonda has been known ever since Columbus as a marker for ships and lately yachts sailing up and down the Eastern Caribbean. But very few people have landed as the island's sheer cliffs plunge straight down into the sea. Ferocious surf and swells pound the one boulder-strewn beach. The Caribs called the island Ocanamanru, and it is thought that weary prehistoric paddling seafarers immigrating or trading between the islands, used the island as a way station. On November 11, 1493, Columbus named it Santa Maria la Redonda meaning St Mary the Round. 

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